The Legends of Anigma: Ethiel Archer | ONC 2023

PART XXXIX

Several times Ethiel tried, but he couldn't make it past a few steps outside the white space. Every time, when the intensity increased, his endurance broke. The best he could manage was go one step more than he did previously. Sometimes he never went beyond even that and would call the spirit's name. And sometimes when the memories were too disturbing, he'd come back in two or three steps before his previous record.

"Tch." The spirit scoffed with a smile. "What a sorry fellow. How about you just go back?"

"No!" Ethiel punched the ground with the side of his fist as he lay sprawled and panted. "I can't afford that... My friends are counting on me..."

"At this rate, you're not going to make it."

That was true. He had to do better than move a few steps. But he just couldn't do it... The pain of it all, it was just too much to bear... His mind could only handle so much... And he didn't even get to rest properly. In the name of rest, he only sat or lay in the white space for a couple of minutes, and those couple of minutes, even though he was surrounded by peace, he couldn't help but spend them ruminating on the painful memories he saw, going down those bitter rabbit holes. But he had to do better...

Once again, he rose after a short rest and ventured out into the black space, braving and enduring through the trial. But this time, he didn't stop at one or few steps beyond where he stopped previous time; he went dozens of steps ahead no matter how much painful it was. He started crying with sadness and shouting in pain, holding his head as if it was gonna burst, but he didn't stop. Slowly and steadily, he kept going.

Things seemed positive until one frightening memory popped in his head.

Tifa came running and stabbed him right in the gut. He stopped and felt that pain. She stabbed repeatedly with a very sharp knife and kept glaring him with hateful eyes.

He couldn't bring himself out of the memory. He was too tired.

In the memory, he fell down and crawled, trying to get away from her, but then she stabbed his back from every possible angle, puncturing it with the knife. And then... something he never thought would happen, happened. He coughed up blood in reality. The pain felt more alive than ever. It felt as if he was going to die...

"TREEEE!!!" He shouted again.

At once, he was warped back into the white space where he fell to his knees and bent over, propping his arms on the ground. He put his hand on his stomach where she had stabbed. The pain was gone. There was no blood. Next, he put his hands on his lips. He felt no blood. He pulled away his hands and stared at them. They were clean.

"What happened?" The spirit asked. "Still didn't get used to it?"

"I coughed up blood... But there is none... How..." He kept looking at his hand.

The spirit chuckled and didn't bother answering him; it continued to enjoy the luxury of lying tension free in the air.

It was envy-arousing to look at it.

Ethiel proceeded with his torturous loop of stepping out into the uncomfortable and calling the spirit when things got rough. It didn't seem to happen again, the thing that happened in the previous horrifying memory. The pain was there, of the sensations and perceptions, but it wasn't more realistic than real like it was in that one memory.

But... Just when he thought that wasn't going to happen again, it did.

In another pop of another traumatising memory, he remembered getting slaughtered and butchered by his own father, and then following that, another horrible memory of slipping in the train platform and falling in the way of a rushing by train made him pain he never ever felt before, and he wondered in his suffering if such pain was even possible.

Again, he coughed up blood, but this time, it flooded out of his mouth as his eyes almost popped out their sockets. When he doubled over to vomit that blood, he shockingly noticed the blood all over his body. His arms and legs were gravely and fatally wounded and bleeding. A coat of blood covered his whole body. Pain overtook him. Death seemed a blink away.

He gathered his dying strength and screamed, "TREEEE!!!"

He plopped back in the white space. The pain left him, but the feeling remained, the feeling of dying. He groped his body and mouth again, only to find yet again that he was completely fine.

"What happened this time?" The spirit asked, its naughty smile still intact.

"I was gonna die... I was covered in blood... I was wounded... not in memory... I saw it in reality..." Ethiel explained, getting triggered but the expression of disbelief on the spirit's face. "I really did! I was gonna die!"

"You seem alright to me. No blood. No wound." The spirit shrugged.

"Then what was that?! You know it! Tell me!" Ethiel sat up furiously.

"Your mind gets more filled with all these inter-dimensional things as you go deeper into the field, and at one point, it starts to think and percieve that memory as your reality, when it goes beyond the limit I mean. The pain you feel may seem real but it is not, your vision may show you things that aren't happening; humans depend heavily on these perceptions and sensations, they believe it, and when you believe that is the truth, your body responds to that belief. So you believed it was all real and real it became until you came back here where you 'think' you are okay because your perceptions are at ease. Did you understand that?"

All that logic went right over his head, but he did get the gist of it.

"Not everything you see and feel is real. To be exact, nothing is real." The spirit put it in a summary.

With that knowledge in his head, Ethiel continued. His loop of torture had a new addition, and it took quite a few tries to get a little used to it. But he never got totally used to any of it. He only learnt to endure it better.

Wounds covered him, making his consciousness stand on the threshold of exit, but he kept it from abandoning him.

The pain was killing him, but he persisted till he broke, and then tried again. All in all, his progress was negligible. He had been on it for long, and the more distance he went, the more time he took to rest when he returned to his safe space. And his distance... he hadn't even covered one percent of the distance between him and the pillar of light.

Eyes closed, head clutched tight in his hands, he walked on slowly, tears running down his eyes. He was covered in what he thought was blood and wounds. He wanted to nod off and just cave in but he knew death waited in his dreams. Half conscious, he went on and on.

But then... amidst all those whispers from memories inside and outside, he heard a scream that sounded very similar.

"LEAFFF..." Came a scream in a whisper.

It was from somewhere far away, but it wasn't faraway. It was close, but it wasn't close.

"ROOOOT..." Came another familiar whisper.

"BRANCCHHHH...." Another joined after a small interval.

"MIIIIISSSSTT..."

"GREEEEENNN...."

Ethiel closed his eyes and tried shutting his ears. The voices were in agony that reflected his own; it increased his pain.

Eyes closed, he suddenly felt someone walking right next to him, grunting and crying. He was about to open his eyes and see who it was, but right then he stumbled on something brittle and fell sprawled on the cosmic floor, the energy-made brushing on his face, tingling on his skin.

He sat up and looked over his shoulders, hands tight around his overwhelmed skull. A skeleton lay behind him. Shock made him drag himself back from the skeleton, but then his hands felt something hard. He had a feeling he knew what it was.

Slowly, he turned his head and looked; he was right. It was a skull...

And beyond that, there were more skeletons. He looked around and suddenly found himself surrounded by skeleton bodies. They were all human... and some of them still had clothes, decomposing slowly...

Fear filled him head to toe, numbing his whole body. The memories and sensations rushed into his head once again. The fear and the pain of the memories together simultaneously were too much.

"TREEEEEE!!!" Ethiel called out.